Pharmaceutical Reps Have To Work Smarter Now

Pharmaceutical Reps Affected By Regulations

In the US, there have been certain regulations that came into effect that changed the way pharmaceutical reps work. If you go to doctors’ offices and see all sorts of trinkets, pens, notepads and other types of stuff that have a name of some drug on it as promotion, these were all supplied to by pharmaceutical reps. Indeed, one of the main tasks of the pharmaceutical representative was to distribute such promotional items to as many doctors and their staff as possible.

It seemed like an easy part of the pharmaceutical representative job and many outsiders to the industry thought that all one had to do to get a great paying job was to hand out promotional items as well as drug samples. Those who are closer to the industy of course know that this is far from the truth as pharmaceutical reps really do have to sell as there is a lot of competition for the different drugs marketed out there.

Pharmaceutical Representative Jobs

The interesting thing is that although the US based pharmaceutical representative jobs may have changed because of these new regulations, it is nothing new in countries like Canada. In Canada, the pharmaceutical reps have had to work without the luxury of promotional items such as pads and pens for many years. In fact, when I was a pharmaceutical rep, I never had such trinkets to use as promo items.

Instead, we had to rely on our science based selling skills when interacting with our physician customers. Sales were still good so what we were doing obviously was successful and pharmaceutical reps today here in Canada continue to do that.

The pharmaceutical representative sales forces in the US will just have to adapt to the new regulations and make their interactions physicians more science based just like those in other countries like Canada. This all implies that the pharmaceutical reps will just have to work smarter.